“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” – Helen Keller

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

November 18

The principal speaker at the November 19, 1863 ceremony dedicating the Gettysburg cemetery was Edward Everett from Massachusetts. As an afterthought the organizers invited Lincoln ‘to make a few appropriate remarks.’ From Lincoln’s perspective, the dedication of this cemetery offered him the opportunity to lay out succinctly the North’s war aims – to explain why all these dead had not died in vain. This opportunity was particularly appealing in that virtually every Northern governor would be in attendance, and such a grouping, at that time, was a rarity indeed.

‘Strike when the iron is hot.’

- Anonymous